1.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi

2.
Tver
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Tver is a city and the administrative center of Tver Oblast, Russia. It is situated at the confluence of the Volga and Tvertsa Rivers, the city was known as Kalinin from 1931 to 1990. Tver’s foundation year is accepted to be 1135, although there is no universal agreement on this date. Originally a minor settlement of Novgorodian traders, it passed to the Grand Prince of Vladimir in 1209, in 1246, Alexander Nevsky granted it to his younger brother Yaroslav Yaroslavich, from whom a dynasty of local princes descended. Four of them were killed by the Golden Horde and were proclaimed saints by the Russian Orthodox church, formerly a land of woods and bogs, the Principality of Tver was quickly transformed into one of the richest and most populous Russian states. As the area was accessible for Tatar raids, there was a great influx of population from the recently devastated south. By the end of the century, it was ready to vie with Moscow for supremacy in Russia, both Tver and Moscow were young cities, so the outcome of their rivalry was far from being certain. Mikhail, the Grand Prince of Tver, who ascended the throne of Vladimir in 1305, was one of the most beloved of medieval Russian rulers and his policy of open conflict with the Golden Horde led to his assassination there in 1318. His son Dmitry the Terrible Eyes succeeded him, and, concluding an alliance with the mighty Grand Duchy of Lithuania, exasperated by Dmitrys influence, Prince Ivan Kalita of the Grand Duchy of Moscow engineered his murder by the Mongols in 1326. On hearing the news of crime, the city revolted against the Horde. The Horde joined its forces with Muscovites and brutally repressed the rebellion, many citizens were killed, enslaved or deported. This was the blow to Tver’s aspirations for supremacy in Russia. In the second half of the 14th century, Tver was further weakened by struggles between its princes. Two senior branches of the house, those of Kashin and Kholmsky. The claimers were backed up by Moscow and eventually settled at the Moscow Kremlin court, during the Great Feudal War in the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Tver once again rose to prominence and concluded defensive alliances with Lithuania, Novgorod, Byzantium, and the Golden Horde. Grand Prince Boris of Tver sent one of his men, Afanasy Nikitin, to search for gold, nikitin’s travelogue, describing his journey from 1466 to 1472, is probably the first ever firsthand account of India by a European. A monument to Nikitin was opened on the Volga embankment in 1955, at last, on September 12,1485, the forces of Ivan the Great seized the city. The principality was given as an appanage to Ivan’s grandson, only to be abolished several decades later, last scions of the ruling dynasty were executed by Ivan the Terrible during the Oprichnina

3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians

4.
Soviet Nonconformist Art
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The term Soviet Nonconformist Art refers to art produced in the former Soviet Union from 1953 to 1986 outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are unofficial art or underground art, from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1932, the historical Russian avant-garde flourished and strove to appeal to the proletariat. Moreover, the new policy defined four categories of art, political art, religious art, erotic art, and formalistic art, which included abstraction, expressionism. Sterligov spent five years in prison outside Karaganda, while Ermolaeva disappeared forever, Sterligovs student, Alexander Baturin, spent a total of 32 years in prison. Art students such as Ülo Sooster, an Estonian who later became important to the Moscow nonconformist movement, were sent to Siberian prison camps, the nonconformist artist Boris Sveshnikov also spent time in a Soviet labor camp. Oleg Tselkov was expelled from art school for formalism in 1955, furthermore, Stalins cult of personality was recognized as detrimental, and within weeks many paintings and busts bearing his likeness were removed from public places. However, despite increased tolerance, the parameters of Socialist Realism still hadnt changed, the thaw era ended quickly, when in 1962, Khrushchev attended the public Manezh exhibition at which several nonconformist artists were exhibiting, including Ulo Sooster with his Eye in the Egg. Khrushchev got into a public and now-famous argument with Ernst Neizvestny regarding the function of art in society, however, this altercation had the unintended effect of fomenting unofficial art as a movement. Artists could no longer hold delusions that the state would recognize their art, yet the climate had become friendly, additionally, punishments for unofficial artists became less severe, they were denied admittance to the union instead of being executed. As a movement nonconformist art was stylistically diverse, however, in the post-thaw era its function and role in society became clear. In any culture, art is a reality, but in the Soviet Union. The goal of nonconformism in art was to challenge the status of official artistic reality, to question it, yet that was the one unacceptable thing. All of Soviet society rested on orthodoxy, and nonconformism was its enemy and that is why even the conditional and partial legalization of nonconformism in the mid-1970s was the beginning of the end of the Soviet regime. In the mid-1980s, Glasnost and Perestroika were the policies that led to the demise of the USSR in 1991, the nonconformist movement, deprived of a host body, suffered demise as well. However, two factors sealed the fate of nonconformism. The first was the 1988 auction of modern and contemporary Russian art in Moscow by Sothebys, the second factor was diaspora - many artists had already emigrated, beginning as early as the late-1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s. In the late 1970s, Yuri Zharkikh emigrated to Germany and then moved to Paris, France, from St. Ivanov, Natalia Toreeva, Evgeny Goryunov, and others. There were many groups and movements that were active in the Soviet Union after the period of the thaw

5.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

6.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

7.
Dmitri Prigov
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Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov was a Russian writer and artist. Prigov was a dissident during the era of the Soviet Union and was sent to a psychiatric hospital in 1986. Born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Prigov started writing poetry as a teenager and he was trained as a sculptor, however, at the Stroganov Art Institute in Moscow and later worked as an architect as well as designing sculptures for municipal parks. Prigov and his friend Lev Rubinstein were leaders of the art school started in the 1960s viewing performance as a form of art. He was also known for writing verse on tin cans and he was a prolific poet having written nearly 36,000 poems by 2005. For most of the Soviet Era, his poetry was circulated underground as Samizdat and it was not officially published until the end of the Communist era. His work was published in émigré publications and Slavic studies journals well before it was officially distributed. From 1987 he started to be published and exhibited officially, and he had been a member of the Artists Union from 1975. Prigov took part in an exhibition in the USSR in 1987, his works were presented in the framework of the Moscow projects Unofficial Art, in 1988 his personal exhibition took place in the USA, in Struves Gallery in Chicago. Afterwards his works were many times exhibited in Russia and abroad, Prigov also wrote the novels Live in Moscow and Only My Japan, and was an artist with works at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. He had many strings to his bow writing plays and essays, creating drawings, video art and installations and even performing music. Prigov, together with philosopher Mikhail Epstein, is credited with introducing the concept of new sincerity as a response to the dominant sense of absurdity in late Soviet and post-Soviet culture. Prigov referred to a shimmering aesthetics that is defined not by the sincerity of the author or the quotedness of his style, in 1993 Prigov was awarded Pushkin Prize of Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F. V. S. and in 2002 he won Boris Pasternak Prize. Dmitri Prigov died from an attack in 2007, aged 66. He had been planning an event where he would sit in a wardrobe reading poetry while being carried up 22 flights of stairs at Moscow State University by members of Voina Group, in 2011 Hermitage Museum presented an important monographic exhibition of Prigovs art in Venice during 54th Biennale

8.
Venice Biennale
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The Venice Biennale is an arts organization based in Venice, and also the original and principal exhibition it organizes. The organization changed its name to the Biennale Foundation in 2009, while the exhibition is called the Art Biennale to distinguish it from the organisation. The Art Biennale, a visual art exhibition, is so called as it is held biennially. A year later, the council decreed to adopt a by invitation system, to reserve a section of the Exhibition for foreign artists too, to works by uninvited Italian artists. The first Biennale, I Esposizione Internazionale dArte della Città di Venezia was opened on April 30,1895 by the Italian King and Queen, Umberto I, the first exhibition was seen by 224,000 visitors. In 1910 the first internationally well-known artists were displayed- a room dedicated to Gustav Klimt, a show for Renoir. A work by Picasso was removed from the Spanish salon in the central Palazzo because it was feared that its novelty might shock the public, by 1914 seven pavilions had been established, Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, France, and Russia. During World War I, the 1916 and 1918 events were cancelled, in 1920 the post of mayor of Venice and president of the Biennale was split. The new secretary general, Vittorio Pica brought about the first presence of avant-garde art,1922 saw an exhibition of sculpture by African artists. Between the two World Wars, many important modern artists had their work exhibited there, in 1928 the Istituto Storico dArte Contemporanea opened, which was the first nucleus of archival collections of the Biennale. In 1930 its name was changed into Historical Archive of Contemporary Art, in 1933 the Biennale organised an exhibition of Italian art abroad. From 1938, Grand Prizes were awarded in the art exhibition section, during World War II, the activities of the Biennale were interrupted,1942 saw the last edition of the events. The Film Festival restarted in 1946, the Music and Theatre festivals were resumed in 1947, the Art Biennale was resumed in 1948 with a major exhibition of a recapitulatory nature. Peggy Guggenheim was invited to exhibit her famous New York collection,1949 saw the beginning of renewed attention to avant-garde movements in European—and later worldwide—movements in contemporary art. Abstract expressionism was introduced in the 1950s, and the Biennale is credited with importing Pop Art into the canon of art history by awarding the top prize to Robert Rauschenberg in 1964. From 1948 to 1972, Italian architect Carlo Scarpa did a series of interventions in the Biennales exhibition spaces. In 1954 the island San Giorgio Maggiore provided the venue for the first Japanese Noh theatre shows in Europe,1956 saw the selection of films following an artistic selection and no longer based upon the designation of the participating country. The 1957 Golden Lion went to Satyajit Rays Aparajito which introduced Indian cinema to the West,1962 included Arte Informale at the Art Exhibition with Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Emilio Vedova, and Pietro Consagra

9.
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
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The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is a museum of modern and contemporary art located in Moscow, Russia. It was opened to public in December 1999, the project of the Museum was initiated and executed by Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts. The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is situated at 25 Petrovka St. near the Petrovsky Boulevard in central Moscow and it is housed in the former Gubin’s mansion, an imposing monument of the 18th century neoclassical movement, designed by the noted Russian architect Matvei Kazakov. The spacious refurbished halls of the premises provide for vast exhibitions of art projects. The exhibition hall has been inaugurated by the Artconstitution - a major show, as a result of the ensued wave of public interest, numerous international exhibitions followed. One of them was a display sponsored by FotoFest, featuring 260 photographic masterpieces by 24 artists from the United States as well as 12 other countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The core of the Museum’s assemblage was constituted from the collection of Zurab Tsereteli, its founder. Artworks of many renowned artists are exhibited in the Museums permanent collection halls like Marcus Jansen. The masters of European and American art, such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, a special emphasis has been given to the collection of Russian avant-garde art. The Museum displays the interesting exposition dedicated to the art of non-conformists of the 1950–70s, whose creative activity was in the opposition to the Soviet ideology. Among them are V. Nemukhin, E. Steinberg, V. Komar, A. Melamid, A. Ney, O. Rabin, A. Zverev, D. Krasnopevtsev, and more. Contemporaries are represented by Boris Orlov, Dmitry Prigov, Francisco Infante, Oleg Kulik, A. Brodski, Aidan Salakhov, Lena Hades, Valery Koshlyakov, Igor Novikov and they are mostly focused on forms of the so-called “actual” art. Today the Museum is renowned not only for its collections and exhibits, the School of Modern Art works alongside the Museum, featuring a two-year program which is realized in concrete practice in creative studiowork. The research work of the Museum revolves around the Museum’s collection, there is a research library at the museum, with a vast collection of Russian and international art publications. The Museum’s laboratory is a recognized center of conservation-related research. Publishing is one of the top priorities in MMOMA’s educational activities, the Museum’s Dialogue of Arts magazine covers the history and theory of contemporary art, and contemporary art practice

10.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections

11.
Russian Museum
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The State Russian Museum, formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III is the largest depository of Russian fine art in Saint Petersburg. It is also one of the largest museums in the country, the museum was established on April 13,1895, upon enthronement of Nicholas II to commemorate his father, Alexander III. Its original collection was composed of artworks taken from the Hermitage Museum, Alexander Palace, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, many private collections were nationalized and relocated to the Russian Museum. These included Kazimir Malevichs Black Square, upon the death of the Grand Duke the residence was named after his wife as the Palace of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and became famous for its many theatrical presentations and balls. Some of the halls of the palace retain the Italianate opulent interiors of the imperial residence. The Ethnographic Department was originally set up in a specially designed by Vladimir Svinyin in 1902. The museum soon housed gifts received by Emperors family from representatives of peoples inhabiting various regions of the Russian Empire, further exhibits were purchased by Nicholas II and other members of his family as State financing was not enough to purchase new exhibits. In 1934, the Ethnographic Department was given the status of an independent museum, the city of Málaga, home to thousands of Russian expats, has signed an agreement to host the first overseas branch of the State Russian Museum. Works displayed in Malaga will range from Byzantine-inspired icons to social realism of the Soviet era and they will be on display in 2,300 square metres of exhibition space in La Tabacalera, a 1920s tobacco factory. The new museum is scheduled to open in early 2015

12.
Tretyakov Gallery
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The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his famous collection of approximately 2,000 works to the Russian nation. The façade of the building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin, during the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection, Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850. The founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854-1855, he had bought 11 graphic sheets and 9 pictures of old Dutch masters, in 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened. The Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings,471 sculptures and 10 drawings of Russian artists, in August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school,75 paintings and 8 drawings of European schools,15 sculptures. The official opening of the called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel. The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851. As the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store. Additions were made in 1873,1882,1885,1892 and 1902-1904, construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, on June 3,1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum, with Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallerys collection. In 1926 architect and academician A. V, shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane. After restructuring in 1928, it housed the administration, academic departments, library, manuscripts department

13.
Hermitage Museum
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The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1754 by Catherine the Great and has open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of only a small part is on permanent display. The collections occupy a complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, the museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky, of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five, namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage and Hermitage Theatre, are open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia. However, entrance is free of charge the first Thursday of every month for all visitors, the museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for visitors is located in the Winter Palace. A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse, the word derives from Old French hermit, ermit hermit, recluse, from Late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, literally people who live alone, which is in turn derived from ἐρημός, desert. Originally, the building housing the collection was the Small Hermitage. Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment, apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the Old Hermitage, the New Hermitage, the Hermitage Theatre, and the Winter Palace, the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, the Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the 13th to the 20th centuries. It is displayed, in about 120 rooms, on the first, drawings and prints are displayed in temporary exhibitions. Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and it serves as a passage to the exhibition of Classical Antiquities. A modest collection of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, including a number of Assyrian reliefs from Babylon, Dur-Sharrukin, the collection of Classical Antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. Its floor is made of a marble mosaic imitating ancient tradition, while the stucco walls

14.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
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It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director and it adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952. In 1959, the museum moved from rented space to its current building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the cylindrical building, wider at the top than the bottom, was conceived as a temple of the spirit. Its unique ramp gallery extends up from ground level in a long, the building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 and from 2005 to 2008. The museums collection has grown organically, over eight decades, and is founded several important private collections. The collection is shared with the museums sister museums in Bilbao, Spain, in 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City. Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a mining family, had been collecting works of the old masters since the 1890s. In 1926, he met artist Hilla von Rebay, who introduced him to European avant-garde art, in abstract art that she felt had a spiritual. Guggenheim completely changed his strategy, turning to the work of Wassily Kandinsky. He began to display his collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City, as the collection grew, he established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in 1937, to foster the appreciation of modern art. The foundations first venue for the display of art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, opened in 1939 under the direction of Rebay, in midtown Manhattan. By the early 1940s, the foundation had accumulated such a collection of avant-garde paintings that the need for a permanent museum building had become apparent. In 1943, Rebay and Guggenheim wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a structure to house, Wright accepted the opportunity to experiment with his organic style in an urban setting. It took him 15 years,700 sketches, and six sets of working drawings to create the museum, in 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorfs estate of some 730 objects, notably German expressionist paintings. By that time, the collection included a broad spectrum of expressionist and surrealist works, including paintings by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka. Nevertheless, she left a portion of her collection to the foundation in her will, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Alexander Calder, Albert Gleizes, Mondrian. The museum was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, Rebay conceived of the space as a temple of the spirit that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. She wrote to Wright that each of these great masterpieces should be organized into space, would test the possibilities to do so

15.
Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University
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The Zimmerli Art Museum is located on the Voorhees Mall of the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The Zimmerli is also noted for its holdings of works on paper, including prints, drawings, photographs, original illustrations for childrens books, the Zimmerli Art Museum was founded in 1966 as the Rutgers University Art Gallery to celebrate the university’s bicentennial. The gallery was expanded in 1983 and renamed the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in honor of the mother of Ralph and Alan Voorhees, the Zimmerli occupies a 70, 000-square-foot facility, which is located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The museum’s permanent collection more than 60,000 works in a wide range of media. The Zimmerli presents exhibitions as a museum with an interdisciplinary perspective. The museum is now free for all visitors and offers tours for groups, the Zimmerli also houses a café. As a teaching museum, the Zimmerli contributes to the programs of undergraduate and graduate students at Rutgers. Rutgers faculty from both the humanities and the use the museum for their classes to stimulate interdisciplinary inquiry among undergraduate and graduate students from all areas of study. Elementary and secondary students enjoy interactive tours designed for their age groups, teachers of K-12 students benefit from workshops that the Zimmerli organizes in collaboration with the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and satisfy mandated professional development requirements. In addition, the museum offers drawing workshops for all ages, as well as storytelling for preschoolers, the Zimmerli Art Museum’s American art collection numbers more than 16,500 objects. It includes paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts, the earliest paintings in the Zimmerli’s collection date to the late 18th century, when the United States and Rutgers University – then called Queen’s College – were in their infancy. Reflecting America’s rich artistic and cultural heritage, the museum showcases examples of portraiture, landscape, still life, narrative art, work by women artists is a distinguishing aspect of the Zimmerli’s American holdings and signals Rutgers’ pioneering role in women’s studies. Strongly represented subjects include portraits and caricatures, landscapes, and popular entertainments, also among the European holdings is a renowned collection of Japonisme, late-19th-century works by European artists inspired by Japanese art and aesthetics. The Zimmerli’s Russian and Soviet nonconformist art holdings contain some 22,000 objects, the Imperial era of Russian art is represented through George Riabov’s 1990 donation, which spans styles and subjects that represent Russia’s diverse artistic heritage, genres, and visual cultures. The Dodge Collection is the largest collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in existence, the collection was amassed by an economics professor from the University of Maryland, Norton Dodge, from the late 1950s until the advent of Perestroika. It was gift of Norton and Nancy Dodge in 1991, more than 20,000 works by close to 1,000 artists reveal a culture that defied the politically imposed conventions of Socialist Realism. This encyclopedic array of nonconformist art extends from about 1956 to 1986, from the beginning of Khrushchev’s cultural “thaw” to the advent of Gorbachev’s glasnost, work created during the Gorbachev era is also represented. A recent gift by Claude and Nina Gruen extends the Zimmerli Russian art holdings to post-Perestroika work produced since 1986, many of these artworks were made by former Soviet artists now living in the diaspora

16.
Nasher Museum of Art
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The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Dukes campus in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2,2005, annual attendance is about 100,000 visitors. The museum, named for Raymond Nasher, is led by Mary D. B. T. and James H. Semans Director Sarah Schroth. The museum is dedicated to presenting contemporary art from around the world, founding director Kimerly Rorschach left for Seattle Art Museum in November 2012. The museum has a collection of Pre-Columbian art, with particularly significant holdings of Mayan ceramics. Wangechi Mutu, A Fantastic Journey presents more than 50 works from the mid-1990s to the present, including collage, drawing, sculpture, installation, the exhibition features many of the artist’s most iconic collages drawn from major international collections, rarely seen early works and new creations. The exhibition also unveils the artist’s sketchbooks of intimate drawings that reveal her creative process and inspirations, other new highlights include Mutu’s first-ever animated video, The End of eating Everything, created in collaboration with Santigold, commissioned by the Nasher Museum. Mutu also will transform the gallery into an installation, including a monumental wall drawing. The exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, Chief Curator and Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum. The Record, Contemporary Art and Vinyl September 2,2010 – February 6,2011 This is the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. S, the exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker. Barkley L. Hendricks, Birth of the Cool February 7,2008 – July 13,2008 This exhibit is the first career painting retrospective of renowned American artist Barkley L. Hendricks. He is best known for his stunning, life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast and this exhibition of Hendricks paintings includes work from 1964 to the present. The exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Monica Museum the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, there is a definitive full-color exhibition catalogue with over 160 reproductions, edited by the Nasher Museums curator of contemporary art Trevor Schoonmaker. The show examines a fascinating period bookended by the two giants of Spanish painting, the works of El Greco and the early paintings of Velázquez. The exhibition is the culmination of 20 years of research by Sarah Schroth and this exhibition includes some 120 paintings, sculptures and decorative art pieces, representing 20 artists. The masters will be seen in context with lesser-known artists working during this time in Spain, the show will bring together works of art from museums around the world, some of which rarely travel outside of their countries, creating a unique opportunity for American audiences. Key loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museo del Prado, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Nasher Museum of Art website ArtDaily coverage of the Nashers opening

17.
Cleveland Museum of Art
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The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Clevelands east side. Internationally renowned for its holdings of Asian and Egyptian art. The museum has remained true to the vision of its founders, keeping general admission free to the public. With about 598,000 visitors annually, it is one of the most visited art museums in the world, for the benefit of all people, forever. The Cleveland Museum of Art was founded as a trust in 1913 with an endowment from prominent Cleveland industrialists Hinman Hurlbut, John Huntington and Horace Kelley. The neoclassical, white Georgian Marble, Beaux-Arts building was constructed on the edge of Wade Park. Wade Park and the museum were designed by the architectural firm, Hubbell & Benes. The 75-acre green space takes its name from philanthropist Jeptha H. Wade, the museum opened its doors to the public on June 6,1916, with Wades grandson, Jeptha H. Wade II, proclaiming it, for the benefit of all people, forever. Wade, like his grandfather, had a great interest in art and served as the museums first vice-president, today, the park, with the museum still as its centerpiece, is on the National Register of Historic Places. In March 1958, the first addition to the building opened and this addition, which was on the north side of the original building, was designed by the Cleveland architectural firm of Hayes and Ruth and consisted of new gallery space and a new art library. The museum again expanded in 1971 with the opening of the North Wing, the museums main entrance now shifted to the North Wing. The auditorium, classrooms, and lecture halls shifted into the North Wing, allowing this space in the Original Building to be turned into gallery space. In 1983, a West Wing, designed by the Cleveland architectural firm of Dalton, van Dijk, Johnson and this provided larger library space, as well as nine new galleries. Between 2001 and 2012, the 1958 and 1983 additions were demolished, designed by Rafael Viñoly, this $350 million project doubled the museums size to 592,000 square feet. Viñoly covered the space created by the demolition of the 1958 and 1983 structures with a glass-roofed atrium, the east wing opened in 2009, and the north wing and atrium in 2012. The West Wing opened on January 2,2014, the museums building and renovation project, Building for the Future, began in 2005 and was originally targeted for completion in 2012 at projected costs of $258 million. The $350 million project—two-thirds of which was earmarked for the renovation of the original 1916 structure—added two new wings, and was the largest cultural project in Ohios history. The new east and west wings, as well as the enclosing of the courtyard under a soaring glass canopy, have brought the museums total floor space to 592,000 square feet

18.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker

19.
Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records